“We’ll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico for a number of reasons,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, citing the influx of migrants and fentanyl into the U.S. and the trade deficit with its northern and southern neighbors.
“I’ll be putting the tariff of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries,” he said. “Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.”
The president said he would decide Thursday night whether to include oil in the list of items to be taxed.
“We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination, probably tonight, on oil. Because they send us oil, we’ll see. It depends on what the price is. If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly, which they don’t,” Trump said.
“Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade,” he continued. “They’ve treated us very unfairly on trade, and we will be able to make that up very quickly because we don’t need the products that they have.”
If the tariffs come to pass, the action would make good threats Trump first made in the final days of the 2024 campaign.
Trump vowed to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico, the United States’ top trading partner, unless the Mexican government curbed the flow of migrants at the southern border.
He later expanded that threat to include Canada and China.
The Hill’s Brett Samuels has more here.
